1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a mail exchange apparatus which accesses a storage medium as inserted and reads mail from the storage medium, and the related techniques thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A card mail exchange method is described in Jpn. unexamined patent publication No. 04-37228 (referred to as the Patent Document in the following explanation). This card mail method contains a card and a mail box. The card includes a user ID storage unit, an address storage unit, a sent mail storage unit, a sender storage unit, and a received mail storage unit. The mail box comprises a card reader unit, a card writer unit, a memory which stores mail with its destination and source.
When the card is inserted to the mail box, a user ID, a destination and a sent message are read from the card and stored to the memory in the mail box. On the other hand, mail for the user ID in the memory of the mail box is written to the received mail storage unit in the card. In this way, mail is kept in the form of a card. Therefore it is possible to carry it around and exchange mail through the mail box by easy operation.
However, users usually desire more high-value added products and services.